


Flaws

by MostWeakHamlets



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Illness, Solitary Confinement, ainsley gets manipulated but she's okay with it, but how could i not write this after the panic attack and the swaying last week, he's a terrible man yes, listen, martin is a bad father, pls let me have some martin whump, serotonin syndrome, this is shameless self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostWeakHamlets/pseuds/MostWeakHamlets
Summary: Martin slips up. Not asking for a physical earlier. Not insisting harder that something was wrong. Not seeing the potential in his daughter. He would never admit to any of it and rather claim it was all part of a larger plan, but those oversights are there.--Martin should have known that his immune system was shot. He wasn’t exposed to many viruses in the hospital. Not like he would have been living outside, walking amongst hundreds of people every day, swapping germs and building up resistance to strains of influenza and the common cold. The hospital was a mostly sanitary place, and he only came in contact with maybe a dozen outside people before solitary.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I just love me some whump and I mainly watch this show for Michael Sheen so here you go
> 
> This might be totally medically inaccurate. I expect a lot to be wrong. 
> 
> Thinking about a chaper two but idk yet

Martin would never admit it to anyone, but solitary confinement was nearly unbearable. 

_ Nearly  _ unbearable.

With no one around him for weeks, he was trapped with himself and his thoughts, and he didn’t always like where his thoughts went. He wondered how much he was missing out on--if Malcolm needed him, if Ainsley needed him, if Malcolm was okay because, despite everything, he did worry about his boy. 

It was similar to his first year in the hospital. He couldn’t stop thinking about his children. He couldn’t help but wonder if Malcolm was alright. Malcolm was his pride and joy. He was so young and so smart and so much like himself. And his little girl! Ainsley was still his baby, and he would miss out on so much with her. 

His entire first year in the hospital, he was plagued with trying to remember how it felt to hold Ainsley on his lap and to sit with Malcolm before bed. He tried clinging on to the feeling of proudly putting his hands on Malcolm’s shoulders as teachers praised him. He tried not regretting not making sure that Malcolm was  _ in bed  _ that night. He tried not regretting how he didn’t hide things better from Malcolm before he was ready. He had been too eager. Too careless.

In the end, however, it was Lieutenant Arroyo’s fault. It was always his fault. 

Martin could work, at least, from his cell. He had his books to distract him. He had music and journals and he was consulting, which he thought was very kind of those who allowed him to do it. He had group meetings and a routine that helped him keep his mind off his flaws (and it was only his worst moments that he acknowledged that he had flaws). And eventually, Malcolm did come back to him. Somewhat. 

In solitary, there were no books or music or group meetings. No distractions. He had read studies, years and years ago, about the effects of solitary confinement. Long-term solitary lead to a decrease in the size of the hippocampus, leading to a change in memory, the ability to learn, and spatial awareness. On top of that, fear and anxiety were seen to increase as well disruption of circadian rhythms.

Martin wasn’t a psychologist, but he knew that that wasn’t good. When the door first closed, he prepared himself. He knew what to expect. Maybe he could fight it off until they let him out. He, of course, had to be stronger than the others who had been in before him. He was certainly an outlier. 

He didn’t doubt himself when started jumping when his door was open. He didn’t doubt himself when he slept until dinner and then stayed up for a full day after that. He didn’t doubt himself until he was out for the first time. 

He was aware of what he must have looked like. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a haircut or had his beard trimmed, but he could feel longer curls resting on the nape of his neck. He knew how unkempt he must have looked, unaware of the dark circles under his eyes and his ashen complexion when he stumbled back in front of the lieutenant. He still didn’t like hearing about it. 

“Do you need a chair? You don’t look so good.”

Martin couldn’t tell if Gil said that out genuine pity or if it was a snarky remark. Either way, he snapped. And then he fell to the floor, trying to walk himself through the symptoms of a heart attack and the ways to keep himself conscious. Once the benzos took hold, he thought maybe solitary  _ was  _ getting to him. 

His only relief came when a message was passed to him half a week later. He was in control again. Malcolm was his again.

And finally, he could see his boy. He looked at the cast on Malcolm’s hand and asked about it. He heard the slight sniffles and one cough and asked about that. As a doctor, he wanted to give his opinion. As a father, he wanted to offer something more. He wanted to prove himself. But Malcolm wanted none of that. 

“Feel better!” he had called out as Malcolm walked out. “Remember rest and fluids!”

Martin should have known that his immune system was shot. He wasn’t exposed to many viruses in the hospital. Not like he would have been living outside, walking amongst hundreds of people every day, swapping germs and building up resistance to strains of influenza and the common cold. The hospital was a mostly sanitary place, and he only came in contact with maybe a dozen outside people before solitary. 

And then the stress of being solitary would have only make it worse. He should have known. He was a doctor. He shouldn’t have been so close. He should have kept his distance. God knows what Malcolm had. 

Two days after seeing Malcolm, he felt the first symptoms start to develop. A scratchy throat and congestion. Nothing too awful. He thought that maybe he could get away with a mild cold. 

Three days after seeing Malcolm, his throat felt on fire and his body ached. At night, he felt chilled. 

Four days after seeing Malcolm, he was rudely woken from a feverish nap to be told he had a guest. 

Martin remembered when his kids were young and brought home all sorts of germs. There were nights of nursing Malcolm through fevers only to succumb to them himself a day later. Jessica would kiss him on the forehead to check his temperature even though he insisted it wasn’t an accurate way of gauging fever.

Malcolm looked better. His voice was clear from any congestion. Martin asked him, with a hoarse voice, how felt and was ignored. His own ailments were ignored as well. Martin gave him as much information as he could muster, trying to think through his headache and talk through his congestion. 

He was little help, according to a frustrated Malcolm. He had mumbled a snarky apology as the guards closed the door behind his son. 

Couldn't anyone see that he was suffering? That his temperature was climbing? That his muscles were aching and his chest was heavy and his coughs were wet? 

The guards weren't gentle when they brought him back to his cell. They never were. 

Martin looked at his one, pathetic blanket as his handcuffs were removed for the night. 

"Do you think I could--"

The door slammed. A shiver went down Martin's back. 

He was in for a long night.

* * *

Martin woke up feeling exceptionally worse. He was freezing and lightheaded. His chest was even tighter and nausea clawed at his stomach. He was ill and was, he thought frantically, in need of someone's help. 

It was a flurry of emotions. He was losing control. He knew it. Solitary was making a mess of him, but there was nothing he could do to stop it without help. 

He regretted sitting up but he pushed through the dizziness. If he didn't get medical attention soon, he'd risk complications of whatever plagued him. 

With how feverish he felt and how his chest rattled when he coughed, he put his money on pneumonia. Malcolm was probably working through a mild flu, and now Martin was going to drown.

He needed antibiotics if it was bacterial. Maybe a course of antivirals if it was viral (at the very least he needed something for the fever that made his body feel a hundred pounds heavier). And a blood test to determine which one it was. He probably wasn't pulling in enough oxygen, either. 

He needed the infirmary. He could treat himself if he needed to, and he wasn't sure if he trusted anyone to handle his health after they let him contract pneumonia.

“Excuse me! I think…” he was breathless, and his voice was hardly the volume he wanted it to be. “I think I need help.”

There was no response. He clutched the edge of the bed and slowly rose to his feet. It really didn’t feel good. His head was officially spinning. He stumbled and fell against the door, using the last of his strength to pound on the door. 

“I really must insist…”

He couldn’t keep himself upright. Maybe someone would find him when bringing him whatever meal came next and finally realize something was wrong. Martin just hoped that they would find him before his organs shut down from the lack of oxygen or before he developed pleurisy. 

He took a step back to his bed and didn’t make it any further.

* * *

He was  _ freezing.  _ The cell had never been so cold before, and his shitty blanket had never been so ineffective. 

“I need better lighting.”

“You can’t get it in here.”

Martin felt a hand at his forehead. He leaned into it. He hadn't realized how long it had been since someone else had touched him. 

He didn’t remember getting back into bed. Perhaps someone had laid him in it. His head ached terribly, and he remembered falling. How long had he been on the cold floor before someone found him?

"It looks like his lips are blue."

Blue lips. That's right. Pneumonia. Central cyanosis, then. It also explained the wheezing he heard come from himself. 

He heard someone rustling around in a bag. It was definitely a medic or a doctor next to him. 

Smooth plastic ran over his forehead. There was a beep. A thermometer. His blanket was pulled away from his arm. There was a light pressure on his finger. A pulse ox. 

“His temperature’s at 104.” Another beep. “And his oxygen saturation is at 85%. It’s probably pneumonia. He should have been in the infirmary by now!”

Those numbers were bad, Martin knew. If he could think clearer, he'd be able to do something about it. 

There were voices trying to defend themselves. Martin liked whoever this woman was. She continued giving orders, telling others what she needed and what he needed. He was wrapped up in thinking about how powerful that all was. He didn’t realize that she had begun talking to him. 

“Dr. Whitly? Can you hear me?” 

He opened his eyes and turned to the voice. She was kneeling by his side. He had expected a smile in his direction--a kind, sympathetic one that doctors always gave their patients when they woke up. Martin had given his fair share of them. But there was none this time. He suspected that it may have something to do with him being a serial killer. 

“Dr. Whitly?”

“Yes.” It hurt to speak. Not only was his throat raw from coughing, but his lungs protested against using any extra breath. 

“You’re going to be taken to the infirmary in a few minutes,” she said. “I’m going to start you on oxygen and then, I’m going to run a blood test for pneumonia along with all the usual vitals. We can’t do chest x-rays here, but if we need to do one or any other type of imaging, we’ll take you downtown to a medical hospital. But we’re going to try to avoid taking you out of here, okay?"

Martin nodded and closed his eyes. The doctor sighed. She pulled the thin blanket up to his chin, tucking his exposed arm back in. It was… tender. It made Martin feel just a fraction better regardless of if he actually deserved to. 

Martin took a deep breath (as deep as he could). “Thank you.”

And he very nearly meant it. He didn’t thank a lot of people in his life, but this doctor seemed to deserve something. Maybe he wasn't totally out of control just yet. Maybe he could play the sympathy card.

He heard her zip up her bag and leave. He wasn’t awake to notice the medics taking him out of the cell and down the hallways.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi here's more self-indulgence hahaha
> 
> again, i barely edited this. medical stuff is probably totally wrong. it's also just not a good chapter but i've always wanted to write about a thoracentesis. i also just needed something to show martin hatching his plan

Martin had a plan. 

He woke up, coughing in the infirmary the afternoon he was brought in (even though he wasn’t aware of the time that had passed) with a nasal cannula tickling his nose and only slightly-softer blankets wrapped around him. He could feel one arm had an IV catheter in it and the other was handcuffed to the bed. It was disrespectful that they didn’t trust him and idiotic to take that precaution. He wouldn’t be able to cause trouble if he wanted to. He could barely breathe. 

He opened his eyes to the bright overhead lights. They did his head no favors. He remembered them from when he worked. The patient’s rooms were always drenched in the white lights that made everyone look sicker than they were and took the life out of every room. On long days during his residency, they occasionally gave him headaches when he made his rounds. 

Martin turned his head and squinted at the person sat next to him, then up to his vital signs monitor. His temperature was up to 104.6, his pulse was 104, and his oxygen saturation was 87%. He took stock of his own symptoms. 

His chest was his first concern. There shouldn’t have been so much pain. It was a stabbing pain--almost spasmodic and flared up whenever he coughed. He couldn’t get in enough air with one breath. 

There had to be fluid building up in his lungs. He had seen it enough in his own patients when they had congestive heart failure. They were given diuretics and in more intense cases, a Thoracentesis was needed. 

He turned to the security man in the chair next to him who just watched him. 

“I have…” Talking was hard. Far too hard. “A pleural effusion.”

He paused to catch his breath as much as he could. The security guard moved closer to the edge of his chair, ready to stand. He didn’t know what Martin meant, and Martin didn’t have the energy to explain it all. The staff in the hospital had picked up on just the basics, he knew, but mostly in psychiatry. They knew about medications and sedatives and conditions. But they didn’t know upper respiratory infections. 

“It’s fluid… around my… lungs.” His words were slurred. His mouth was dry and tasted awful. “It’ll need--”

He was caught off by coughing. The fit made his lungs feel as if they were being torn apart. Every intake of breath was a harsh wheeze and didn’t bring in much air. He grew dizzy. 

He felt himself being sat up with his bed. His nasal cannula was pulled away and he thought for a brief moment that they had been looking for a chance to let him die this entire time. Pneumonia complications would be the perfect coverup. But before he got too deep into that thought, a mask was placed over his nose and mouth. 

“He said he had a plury… effusion?”

“A pleural effusion.  _ Shit.  _ We can’t treat that here.” That doctor was back. “Dr. Whitly, we’re going to transfer you.” 

He nodded for her. 

“Just hold on, and you’ll be getting proper treatment soon.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t doubt that he needs to be in an actual hospital. A man can only fake so much. Now,  _ please  _ find people to get ready to transfer him. I’ll give him a sedative. Maybe he’ll sleep through it all.”

Martin’s coughing had stopped, but it left him drained and he didn’t recover from the dizziness. A sedative wouldn’t be necessary. He would have protested against it if he could and if… well, if sedatives weren’t a little fun. 

He also wondered how much sympathy he could get out of the doctor. When she had pulled the blanket around him a few hours before, he could tell she was terribly dedicated to the Hippocratic Oath and probably made herself see Martin as a patient first and a sociopathic murderer second. She had probably taken the job, thinking she was going to be a good person for treating those who the rest of the world thought deserved death. 

He closed his eyes and groaned to test the waters. 

Her hand was on his cheek in an instant. 

“Dr. Whitly?” Her voice was so soft. “I’ll get you a pain killer. I’m going to try to make this transfer as painless as possible.”

Martin was in control again. He had her in the palm of his hand. 

He fell asleep with a nice cocktail of drugs coursing through him.

* * *

Martin woke up handcuffed to another bed, still struggling to breathe, still chilled, and still with an oxygen mask over his face. A different man in the same uniform sat across from him, watching. A nurse was to his right, typing on a computer at a furious speed. Things had changed since he had worked in a hospital. Patient information at check-in was still mostly recorded by hand back then. And now they had everything they needed to know about him stored in a database, passed from doctor to nurse to psychiatrist. 

It was, again, about control. He wanted to know what she was typing about him even if he knew it was mostly about vitals. 

The doctor walked in with another nurse, wheeling in a cart with needles and catheters and bottles. 

“You were right,” she said. “We did a CT scan. You have a pleural effusion on top of double pneumonia.” 

That wasn’t good. That wasn’t anything close to good. The nurse at the computer winced. 

He reached for his mask with his free arm but only managed to paw at it. The doctor pulled his hand away and gently pulled the mask back. Her touches were soft. 

“Bacterial?” he croaked. He had officially lost his voice. 

She nodded. “You must have picked it up from a guard, and your immune system hadn’t seen anything like that in a long time. I’m impressed it became this bad so fast. But it’s nothing we can’t treat with a lot of antibiotics.”

She was using That Voice. It was the voice doctors and nurses used when trying to be comforting. It was almost a coo. It was condescending, and she didn’t deserve to be condescending. She didn’t realize that he was so poorly because he was left in his cell for five days before receiving treatment, and she didn’t even know where the exposure came from.

But that voice meant that Martin still had her where he wanted her. 

She put the mask back down. “We’re going to doing a Thoracentesis in a few minutes to get the fluid out of your lungs, okay?”

He nodded. He had done hundreds of them before. The nurses always flocked the patients, knowing how nervous invasive procedures made non-medical people when they were awake during them. But Martin always had steady hands and a gentle touch. He always finished quickly, and the patients asked in awe if that was it. 

“Do you think you can sit up on the edge of the bed for us?” the doctor asked. 

He thought about it. He shook his head. 

“Can you try for us?”

Why ask in the first place if it wasn’t really an option? 

He nodded. The nurse at the computer stepped up to put her hand on his shoulder. The nurse that came in with the doctor was at his other side. He pushed himself forward, having already been propped up in the bed. 

His vision began dimming, and his ears rung. 

“Lay him back!” the doctor ordered. 

There was some commotion that he was vaguely aware of. He closed his eyes against the spinning. His stomach churned, and he thought for a moment if vomiting in his oxygen mask would be disgusting or be a cause for sympathy. It was hard to tell sometimes. He never liked dealing with that. But then again, he was--yeah. 

“Dr. Whitly, can you hear me?” the doctor asked. 

Martin nodded with great effort. His head was beginning to clear. Fainting (and nearly fainting) was always over-dramatic for something that passed so quickly. 

There was a cold compress on his forehead and then at the back of his neck. 

“Just keep breathing,” the doctor said. 

What else was he going to do? Stop breathing? No matter how appealing not needing to take in the painful gasps of air was, he didn’t think he’d stop breathing. 

A few minutes passed, and he opened his eyes. The doctor was smiling at him now. While the nearly-fainting wasn’t planned, it did do something to his advantage.

“We’ll go ahead and do the Thoracentesis with you right here. I really don’t want to put this off any longer. And then we’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day. Sound good?”

He wondered how far he could push her--deliberately or not. What would it take to get her to  _ not  _ leave him alone? How long could he keep her by his side? 

“Let’s try sitting up again. You don’t have to move much. There you go!”

He was sat up again and draped over a bedside table. The nurses lowered the bed behind him to give them a little more space. The security guard briefly uncuffed him only to recuff him to the table. It was hardly necessary. He wasn’t going anywhere and was about to have a needle stuck between his ribs. 

Martin rested his head on the pillow they had laid down, turned towards the doctor. As the nurses untied his gown (and when had he been put in a gown? All the way back in the infirmary?), he watched her prepare the needle and catheter with her gloved hands. She pulled her mask over her face. 

“Try not to move too much for me,” she said. “Try not to cough if you can.”

He felt the povidone-iodine spread around his back and repressed a shiver. It didn’t seem possible to be any colder. 

“We’ll be done soon.” There was more cooing from the doctor. 

He hummed as a reply and tried walking himself through the procedure in his head. 

There was a few pinches. The local anesthetic. 

“There’ll be a little pressure,” the doctor said. “Let us know if it’s too much.”

A 20 gauge over-the-needle catheter. 

“A nice long exhale for me.” 

He did so. The needle was pulled out. The catheter stayed behind. 

“Very good.”

A three-way stopcock was attached. He felt a little more pressure. Aspirating the fluid into a syringe. 

“Can you pass me the tube and get the container ready?” 

The tube was connected to the stopcock. The syringe was removed. He could hear the fluid hit the bottom of the glass bottle. 

Martin could see the syringe, full of the dark yellow liquid, as the doctor laid it on her cart.

“Almost done,” she said. 

Holding back his coughs was harder than he had anticipated. He cleared his throat a few times, reminding himself that once the catheter was removed, he could relax. 

The doctor smiled at him again. He wanted to look behind him and see how much fluid they were collecting. He didn’t trust them to not take too much and risk re-expansion pulmonary edema. 

“Feeling okay?” the doctor asked. 

He nodded. There was the overly-sympathetic question he had heard a thousand times. She couldn’t help but feel at least a little bad for him. Sympathy wasn’t something he had received a whole lot of lately. Even his worst moments--laying on the floor having a panic attack, shivering from fever as he was escorted back to his solitary cell--people didn’t have sympathy for him, which left his at a disadvantage. But doctors were easier to break. They didn’t like seeing people suffer and often tried ignoring who their patients were to make sure they were getting the right care. 

Martin, even with his impeccable bedside manner, had never quite understood it, but he was fascinated by it. And he was going to exploit it. 

“A little light-headed?” 

He nodded again as the nurses helped him ease back onto his pillows. He knew it was temporary and from the new oxygen he was taking in. 

He looked at the container as they loaded it onto the cart. It looked fine. Not too much fluid.

“I think it’s okay if we take this off.” She pulled off his oxygen mask. A nurse slid a nasal cannula around him. “This should be more comfortable.”

He would never take a mask off a patient before he started seeing the oxygen saturation levels rise. There could be other causes of shortness of breath that they missed, and they shouldn’t risk lowering levels even more. There was still time for complications. 

But he  _ was  _ breathing a bit easier, and the cannula  _ was  _ more comfortable. Comfortable enough to sleep in--which he was about to do. It was hard to keep his eyes open for long. 

The blankets were tucked against him again, and he couldn’t be sure but he thought he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... how did we feel about Martin getting stabbed? I honestly think we should have seen a painful recovery. Like open-heart surgery? And he's fine after a few episodes? Boo. Anyway, pretty cool that we know who the girl in the box is now. 
> 
> Enjoy this chapter! I'm glad that there's some of out there that really like Martin whump. Ainsley makes a special appearance in this, and I have Plans for her if I do actually continue this. 
> 
> Also, if you're emetophobic, I am Sorry.

Ainsley developed colic when she was five weeks old. Jessica had been at her wit’s end. Martin had volunteered to stay up with her, eager to take the extra moments alone with his new daughter. Between the fussy baby and two-year-old and working, he was exhausted. He didn’t think it was possible to be even more exhausted. Even med school didn’t leave him so exhausted. 

But a colleague had told him that he was a good father for looking after her, and he played that over and over again in his head as he stayed up later and later with Ainsley in his arms. A father has to make sacrifices, he told everyone, and there wasn’t anything in the world he wouldn’t give his kids. 

Ainsley got over the colic after a few months, and Martin was able to sleep like the dead at night again. He had been certain that he would never lose as much sleep as he had then.

And yet, that exhaustion was nothing compared to the exhaustion he felt lying in a hospital bed, trying to spit phlegm and mucus into an emesis bag without gagging. He had never felt so physically drained or repulsed by himself. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a small heave because his own patients had apologized to him after doing the same thing, and it just felt appropriate. 

“You’re fine,” the doctor said. “You should know that doctors are used to this.”

She helped him hold the bag to his mouth. He was  _ really  _ starting to get frustrated with handcuffs now. He tugged against it once, getting a scolding look from the security guard across from him.

Martin leaned back in his bed and tried catching his breath. The worst part of double pneumonia, he thought with his professional medical opinion, was that it was impossible to recover from the coughing. He would cough hard enough to leave himself breathless and then be unable to take deep enough breaths to steady himself. 

“Can he have a visitor?” 

Martin watched a nurse open the door and look between the security guard and the doctor. 

“If she says it’s alright,” the guard said, gesturing to the doctor. 

The doctor gestured to Martin. “If you feel up to it.”

“Who is it?” Martin asked. 

If it was anyone from the NYPD (excluding, of course, Malcolm), then he wanted them to think he was on his deathbed. He would have turned them away, hoping to get word back to Malcolm about how poorly his father was while also avoiding seeing the face of Gil Arroyo.

“An Ainsley Whitly.” 

Martin’s eyes lit up. “Of course!”

He tried sitting up further and running his hand over his hair. It felt terrible and probably looked terrible after days of sweat and oil building up from the cell. All of him felt terrible, actually. He felt achy starting in his lower back (which he assumed was from not only his increasing age but from being in a bed for too long) and ending in his head (still from his fall however many days ago). 

Ainsley stepped into the room, already looking nervous, clutching the straps of her purse. Her hands were restless. 

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“Malcolm said you were… here.”

“Yes.” Martin nodded, smiling. Then he furrowed his eyebrows. “Malcolm told you I was here?”

“He was here this morning,” the doctor said. “You woke up long enough to say hello and then you fell back asleep as soon he started talking.”

The guard stifled a laugh. Martin gave him a half-hearted dirty look.

“I told him to come back in a few days,” the doctor said. 

“But I just wanted to come and make sure Malcolm wasn’t playing it up.”

“Was he?” Martin asked. 

“No. You  _ do  _ look half-dead.”

Martin tried to chuckle. It came out raspy and ended with a painful cough. Ainsley’s eyebrows went up for a moment in concern before she schooled her expression. 

“Is that all you wanted to see?” Martin asked. 

Ainsely shrugged. “I guess I should probably ask how you’re doing.”

“Did your mother ever tell you that you were colicky as a baby?” 

Ainsely frowned and shook her head. She looked hesitant to let Martin keep going. 

“You kept us up all night every night for three months,” he continued, taking pauses occasionally to try to catch his breath. “ _ I  _ mostly sat up with you until you calmed down. And there’s not much you can do for colic. You just have to wait it out. My point is, that I didn’t sleep for almost three months while being, as you know, one of the top doctors in the state.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I’d rather go through that again for three months than feeling like this for another week.”

Ainsley tried fighting back a smile, but the apparent glee she got for ruining her father’s sleep schedule couldn’t be contained. Martin smiled with her. 

“I mean, of course, it’s something I would go through again,” he said. “If I needed to. It was miserable, but you and I did watch a lot of  _ Golden Girls  _ at 2 am together.”

“Oh my God,” Ainsley mumbled. 

Martin cleared his throat, trying to suppress a cough. “Maybe if you have kids someday, you’ll understand that there’s—” Martin allowed a small cough to get through. “There’s always silver linings.” 

He coughed again. And again. And then it didn’t seem to stop. 

The doctor leaned him forward and grabbed a new emesis bag. She held it out for him this time, as his mobile arm grabbed at the front of his gown. Ainsley’s heels clicked as she moved closer. 

“Is he okay?” she whispered. 

The doctor  _ and  _ his daughter. He was doing so well, and he had barely done anything. Jessica must have encouraged Ainsley to be sympathetic as she grew up, and he was thrilled to see that backfire. He hadn’t expected one of his own children to be capable of something so foreign to him. Malcolm had his moments when it was fleeting, and he could never place Ainsley. She was either desperate enough for a father-figure (after all, Malcolm had Gil, but Ainsley had no one), that she was allowing herself to feel something for her own, despicable dad. Or she was just overdoing the empathy in an attempt to  _ not  _ be like Martin. 

Martin had always suspected it was the first one, but he also had begun piecing together Ainsley from her news reports and few visits. There was determination in her that he knew she got from him. Sure, Jessica was stubborn. She did what she had to for “other people”. But Ainsely was on the verge of being ruthless. Journalism, much like killing, was 50% about exploiting other people and 50% making yourself look good to the public. 

Martin coughed until he gagged, and the next step was inevitable. The doctor tightened the grip of the bag, and Martin vomited. He laid back and closed, too drained to do much else. 

“Maybe he’ll be up for visitors in a few days,” the doctor said. “Pneumonia is really only this rough in the beginning.” 

There was a wet towel at his mouth. When he opened his mouth, he was shocked to see that it was Ainsely, dabbing at his beard and then at the sweat on his forehead. 

“Children shouldn’t have to see their fathers like this,” he said. Then, for good measure, “It’s embarrassing.”

Ainsley scoffed. “Please. I was in a sorority. I took care of plenty of girls who were passed out in their own vomit.”

Martin’s eyes lit up. “You were in a sorority? Which one? Oh, I bet you were president.”

“Zeta Kappa Psi.” Ainsely smirked. “And I was vice president. I ran for president a couple of times, but they never elected me.”

Martin scoffed. “They don’t know what they were missing out on. I’m sure you were very cute in your… matching clothes and letters. Any frat boys give you trouble?”

“Dad,” she said in an almost-whinging tone that a teenaged girl would use when her dad was embarrassing her. “Being a sorority is serious.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. You girls don’t get enough credit.” 

Ainsley continued bathing his face, running the cloth over his cheeks and through his beard to his jaw. It felt wonderful on his overheated skin. Ainlsey didn’t make eye contact, but she did look a touch upset on his behalf. There was something being pushed into his IV.

“You should come back when I can shower and brush my teeth,” Martin said. “We can watch  _ Golden Girls  _ like the old days.”

The cloth stilled. Ainsley handed it back to the doctor and took a step back. 

“We’ll see,” she said. 

Martin felt light. He closed his eyes as Ainsley ducked her head and walked out, the sounds of her heels echoing down the hall. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I decided to take this off anonymous
> 
> 2) I really don't think this fic is any good, but I'm very invested in writing Ainsley into this and exploring backstories, so here it is. More bad writing.

Martin had been told that it was an inconvenient time to change up his medication regimen, but in his defense, it was already in the works. 

The doctor looking after him and his usual psychiatrist sat with him for an hour, asking questions as if there were only two doctors in the room. He tried insisting that he understood it all and could weigh in on the decisions. They were quick to tell him that psychiatry and cardiology were two different fields and that his current state would affect his judgment. His lungs spasming were quicker to shut him up. 

He had been in the hospital for two days by that point, and he was nearing the end of his washout period of one anti-depressant. He had been suggesting they adjust his cocktail of meds for almost a year, and they had told him that there was “much to consider.” And then it seemed as though they never considered anything even as his weight crept up and he found it harder to relax every day and find the motivation to do almost anything. 

It was a sensitive process, everyone told him for the twelfth time. His cocktail of meds had been carefully selected after trial and error. A combination of SSRIs and an antipsychotic (to do little else but keep him calm) was handed to him with a little paper cup of water every morning for 20 years, and he reported on how it made him feel twice a week in therapy sessions. They had changed his regimen over the years as new drugs were put on the market and as he slept all day and fought off anxiety and nausea. 

Solitary had fucked him up a bit more than he wanted to admit. After his panic attack, they had kindly told him that they could adjust his medication if he felt he needed it. It was a win, he thought bitterly. But he was finally getting a new pill in his little cup that afternoon in the hospital. 

By that evening, he quietly told a nurse that he thought that his fever was rising. She was already calling for the doctor and taking notes of his vitals. 

Within the hour, he wasn’t quite sure where he was. 

* * *

Martin was raised in a very Catholic household. He was an only child and therefore was at the center of his parents’ attention and scrutiny. They told him that everything humans did was a sin and confession was the only way to be redeemed as a person. God’s opinion of you was the only one that truly mattered because at the end, He was the one that was going to make the decision of where you went. 

Martin bought into it for a while. He was confirmed at 15 and began awkward confessions where he sat in the box, trying to think of something to be sorry about. He confessed to angering easily most weeks (which had been an ongoing problem all his short life that was never addressed by his family except through prayer) and repeated something he read in a pamphlet. He recited his Hail Marys and sat through Mass and did his nightly studies and continued being an altar server and was told to feel guilty for every little moment of his life. 

His junior year of high school was when he began questioning it all. He had made a snarky comment to a nun, and the world didn’t burn. He intentionally didn’t return a pen to the girl who sat next to him after that. He looked at racy magazines with the other boys, slipped his hand up the skirt of a classmate one night, unclasped her bra another, and threw a few punches at her new boyfriend a month later. 

_ “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession.” _

The world hadn’t burned around him. There was no lightning or floods or plagues. 

_ “I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.” _

He never told the priest his true sins. It made his double life that much more exciting. In church, he was a model Catholic. He volunteered whenever he could. He allowed old women to pinch his cheeks even after he had outgrown in. He charmed everyone with his smiles and dreams of going to med school. 

_ “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.” _

But his home life was different. 

_ “For His mercy endures forever.”  _

Even though the church had changed before he was born, his parents still enforced the old, strict teachings. While his priest was young and told him that sinning is what made him human, his parents had told him that God would only be allowed to save him. But how could God save him, he asked, if he was always doing something wrong? Wouldn’t God get tired of forgiving if humans were just going to inevitably sin again? 

His parents told him not to ask questions. Questions weren't allowed. It was disrespectful not only to the priests that had taught all of them over the years, but it was also a gateway to losing faith. And that meant Hell. 

Martin continued pushing the boundaries of sin until he found himself in front of his first body, pleased with his work. He had removed himself from the church, and he had told himself that his children would never end up being affiliated with Catholicism in any way. It was one of his points of being a good father. Forcing guilt and shame on a child was wrong. 

* * *

Martin felt the nurses lay ice packs on him. It was so cold against his feverish skin, it burned. It felt like claws reaching up and grabbing his arms and legs. 

He didn't know any better, so he cried out as much as his raw throat allowed him to. He was sure this was Hell. It was what the priests had described to him and what his parents had warned him of. His last moments in his mortal body were going to be full of pain and fear. 

He begged for his last rites. He tried to repent. He mumbled a verse in broken Latin—whatever he remembered from what his parents made him study in disappointment that mass was no longer in the dead language when he was born. He ran through a messy confession, apologizing for how he had killed so many people. 

Surely, there had to be a priest in the building. Someone could save him before it was too late. He was still forgivable. 

His delirious ramblings didn't distract the nurses and doctors working to lower the 106-degree fever or flush the new antidepressants out of his system. But they did startle Ainsley, who had offered her help in pressing a cold compress to her father's forehead. She listened and thought and tried to speak over the scared mumblings of repentance. 

* * *

The doctor explained to Ainsley, once Martin was calm and his muscle tremors were reduced to occasionally flinches, that there's something called Serotonin Syndrome. Hard to predict, a bitch to diagnose, and usually not so bad that it causes, well, what Ainsley had witnessed. 

Ainsley looked at her father, pale and ill, on the bed. She dared to reach out and brush his hair back.

The doctor invited her to stay the night if she felt comfortable doing so and explained what'd they do for Martin. It was likely he'd behave differently as they were immediately pulling him off his SSRIs until his symptoms totally went away. There was a chance that he'd be asleep for a long while. Or at least lethargic and perhaps irritable. 

Ainsley had wanted to scoff at that last one. How do you measure irritability in a man like him? He was always irritated when he didn’t get his way. 

She stayed with him, though. She listened to his rough breathing. She replayed his scared, delusional ramblings in her head. 

Martin wasn’t a man to ever apologize, but he couldn’t stop doing so as he burned under her fingers. The intensity of the apologies—atoning as if there were a dozen clergy men before him—and the  _ guilt  _ that he expressed was jarring. For decades, he never regretted anything he did. And now, he couldn’t seem to do it enough. 

Ainsley watched him twitch in his sleep, pulling against his handcuffs. She looked at the guard who watched with an unamused expression. He had hovered before, cautious, until the nurses shooed him away. Martin wasn’t going to be a physical threat for a long time. 

“Can you take those off? For now?” Ainsley asked, very early that next morning when no one should be awake. “He’s going to hurt himself.”

The guard looked almost sympathetic for her. “I can’t without higher orders.”

“Can you get the higher orders then? What’s he even going to do? He can’t even sit up on his own.” 

The guard no longer looked sympathetic. He looked tired and eager for his shift change. The Whitlys probably had a reputation among the staff, she thought. Between the four of them, they probably all deserved it. 

Martin began to stir when a new guard came. Ainsley was falling asleep in her chair, curled up. Thankfully, she hadn’t shown up in her usual suit and heels. She wore leggings and a sweater that made sleeping in an uncomfortable hospital chair almost bearable. A nurse had given her a blanket with a kind smile when they had checked Martin’s vitals last. It had just come out of a warming cabinet and was enough to nearly send her to sleep immediately. 

“What are you doing here?” 

She opened her eyes. Martin had turned his head to her. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look irritable, either. Ainsley bit her lip to hide a smile at that. 

“Waiting for you to wake up,” she said. “Making sure you didn’t die.”

Martin blinked slowly as if he was about to fall back asleep. He looked around the room before looking at her again. 

“What time is it?” he asked. 

Ainsley tapped her phone. “3 am.”

_ “Why are you here?”  _

It wasn’t accusatory. It actually did sound like a father gently scolding his child to protect them. Ainsley couldn’t respond. It was a tone she was unfamiliar with. 

“You should be home,” he continued, voice so hoarse he could hardly be heard. “You don’t have to watch over me at 3 am.”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said.

A nurse came in, most likely discreetly alerted by the guard that Martin was awake and alert. She looked at his vitals and asked a few questions. He answered with short responses. 

The nurse told him what had happened, and he rolled his eyes before realization set in them. 

“Did you see that?” 

Ainsley had walked in right as nurses were beginning to worry. She dropped her purse and walked to his side. They had made eye contact, but he didn’t see her. And that was when the Latin began which she didn’t recognize and mistook for gibberish induced by what she could only assume was a stroke or a brain aneurysm. 

Ainsley nodded. She pressed her lips together. Her eyes burned. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Martin said, and it was so full of tenderness that she burst into sobs. 

The nurse came to her side with tissues and a hand to hold. It  _ was  _ scary seeing Martin in that state, but it was scarier to think about how she had cared for him so much. 

Malcolm had Gil. He had his friends at the NYPD. He had their mother. Ainsley had co-workers who made jokes about Googling “hot serial killers” after her interview. She had people who were hesitant to be her friend after she dismissed their boundaries even if she did for their best interest. 

In the past, she had texted and called girls’ ex-boyfriends after hearing her sorority sisters drunkenly lament about how they missed them. She had set up dates for them. Her sisters would yell at her and refuse to go on the dates. Sororities were supposed to be families, but some family they were. She was conveniently not invited to alumni meetups, and she had stopped showing up to rush events when she realized no one she had pledged with would speak to her. 

And pledging was another can of worms. She had impressed the older girls so much during her own that they had allowed her be in charge of the next years. After a stern letter from the Greek Life Council, she was suspended from pledging for the rest of the semester and relieved of all of her duties. Ainsley had tried telling her mother about it, but Malcolm needed her, and she didn’t have time for Ainsley’s “silly sorority problems.”

Martin held out his hand. Ainsley shakily rose to her feet and went to him. He put his hand on her back in an awkward half-hug. 

Ainsley was always focused on being the “well-adjusted” one of the family. She thought that maybe if she ignored everything, she wouldn’t have to deal with it. And it wasn’t as if she was ever given the space to complain. Malcolm would always be suffering more than her, so what was the point? 

“I can never complain,” she said. 

Martin, confused, laughed. “What?”

“I can’t complain. It’s always about Malcolm. Everything’s always about Malcolm.”

It was 25 years of repressed feelings coming out in messy crying. Martin raised his eyebrows in concern. 

“Oh,” he said. “I see. I suppose your mother and I haven’t given you enough attention—I mean, I don’t know what she’s done, but… I suppose I have prioritized him. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Ainsley wrapped her arms around herself. It was always about Malcolm’s therapy sessions and medications and nightmares. She understood. He had seen more. But she lost just as much as he had if not more. 

“You can complain all you want to me,” Martin said. “I’m here now.” 

Ainsley nodded. It sounded like a good deal in the moment. She had told herself that he shouldn’t get out of his parenting duties just because he had been incarcerated for almost her entire life. If no one else would step up for her, then she would have to choose her dad over the rest of her family and “friends” and pseudo-family. And  _ that _ would show them all. They were less desirable than a serial killer to her. 

Martin softly shushed Ainsley until he was interrupted by coughs. Ainsley had grabbed an emesis bag, knowing where they were kept by now. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her sweater and helped Martin hold it steady. 

Neither of them noticed the guard and nurse exchange a nervous glance. 


End file.
